In 2012, the company launched its first product, the BriteTap chicken waterer. This patented device shields the chicken's water from contamination, making the water healthier for chickens and more pleasant for owners to handle. The BriteTap waterer is simple to set-up, simple to maintain, and totally sanitary.

ChickenWaterer.com is a privately held company located in Palo Alto, California. Products designed by the company are produced and assembled by third party manufacturers hired for their expertise in production.

Mark Delman is founder and General Manager of ChickenWaterer.com. His work history includes management positions at Kraft Foods, Eastman Kodak, and Adobe Systems.

Mark has been an avid gardener for almost 40 years and is author of the PlanterTomato blog. Mark and his family live in Palo Alto along with a flock of six hens, two beehives, a savage Labrador retriever and two ungrateful hamsters.

Question: Why did you start the company?

Mark: I want to make it easy for people to produce delicious, healthy food in their own backyards. Unfortunately, many of the tools on the market today for home food producers are either too difficult to use or don't work very well. Many of these tools haven't seen any product improvements in decades.

For example, traditional chicken waterers. Every small flock owner will tell you that keeping the water clean is a chore because it's constantly contaminated by dirt and droppings. The BriteTap waterer solves that problem, making it much easier to keep chickens.Question: Do you plan to introduce new products?

Mark: Absolutely! Our goal is to produce a full line of products, but we'll only make a new product if we think it's significantly better than everything else on the market.Question: How do you measure the company's success?

Mark: Our most important measure of success is customer satisfaction as measured by our reviews and by the percentage of customers who speak favorably about our products to their friends and family (net promoter score).

Question: What advantages are there to using contract manufacturers to do the actual fabrication of the company's products?

Mark: We believe our value as a company is in product design. We want to focus our energies on creating radical new designs that solve our customer's problems and leave the actual fabrication to those with expertise in manufacturing. This also gives us the flexibility to choose the very best manufacturer for any given product we want to produce.